Colorado has not elected a Republican governor since 2002.

On Thursday night, four candidates offered competing visions for how the party can reverse its 20-plus years of failing to secure the seat.

The discussion hosted by the Women of Weld County touched on electability, affordability, housing, and how a Republican governor would work with the Trump administration.

While 20 candidates are vying to win their party’s primary contest, only four attended the debate: Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, Joshua Griffin, Joe Oltmann and Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell.

Colorado’s last Republican governor was Bill Owens. The state is now considered by many to be solidly blue. Gov. Jared Polis, the current governor, won reelection in 2022 by nearly 20 percentage points. Democrats also won every other statewide office.

Asked how Republicans can win statewide again, the candidates largely agreed the party must change its approach but differed on what that change should look like — with some blaming weak candidates, others pointing to missed issues and the unaffiliated voters. One questioned the legitimacy of Colorado’s elections.

Griffin, a military veteran and company CEO, said it’s not because Democrats are “so good.” Rather, he said, the candidates Republicans have run in the major state offices are “so bad.” Griffin pushed for more dialogue and working across the aisle with Democrats. He also said Republican candidates need to work harder to reach young voters.

“Not every Democrat is your enemy,” he said. “I believe that people who are elected, most of them, do want to really get things done, but because we’re in this political playground of you versus us. But we just need to be approachable, you need to be respectful, you need to be strategic, and I think I have a background to get that done.”

Mikesell challenged the idea that Colorado is now a blue state that will always lean Democrat. The longtime sheriff said Colorado is an issues-based state, and, in the past, Republicans have missed the mark on issues that matter most to people.

“What I mean by that is look at where we’re at now with crime in Colorado. We’re all the highest crime rates in the United States,” he said. “Look at our businesses. Over 45% of business owners who have been polled this last year said that they were looking to invest outside the state of Colorado. You cannot win in this state unless you are able to reach out to unaffiliated voters, independent voters, Democrat voters — and still keep our party going.”

“Those are the issues, and that’s the only way we can do that,” he added.

Oltmann said it’s a tough question because he believes the candidates put forward by both parties are “terrible.”

“They haven’t represented the people in this county, or any county in Colorado,” he said.

Oltmann has perennially claimed that elections are “fraudulent.”

“Trump’s going to take care of that issue, and then we start taking care of issues and not looking at it as a Democrat or Republican, but who’s going to go into the community and actually listen and then come back out and lead together, lead from the community, rather than doing this thing where we mark orders and give special interest and lobbyists the only seats to the table,” he said.

Kirkmeyer told the several dozen people in attendance at the Fort Lupton Recreation Center that she is the most qualified to get Republicans back in the driver’s seat.

“I am a credible candidate,” she said. “I’m not going to be over here talking about platitudes. I have delivered, whether as a county commissioner or a member of my community or a state senator, I’ve delivered for the state of Colorado and for my county.”

Kirkmeyer noted that Colorado’s voters are 51% unaffiliated — she said the key to success will be suburban moms who are worried about healthcare and education.

Kirkmeyer also said that, over the years of serving on the state’s Joint Budget Committee and in the Senate, she has learned to work with Democrats to solve problems.

Oltmann challenged Kirkmeyer, saying he doesn’t understand how she can brag about anything positive coming out of the state legislature.

Disagreeing, Kirkmeyer said her bipartisan efforts have cut property taxes and made progress in addressing the state’s affordability woes.

“I think protecting private property rights with bills that I’ve carried and passed (and) working with people across the aisle are a big deal,” she said.

Oltmann replied that the property tax reduction was so minimal that it doesn’t help.

‘Cut regulations across the board‘

When asked how to address the state’s affordability crisis, Mikesell said the legislature has imposed too many regulations.

“We are going to have to cut regulations across the board,” he said. “We’ve got to start producing more in this state.”

Oltmann said he would begin by lowering property taxes and reducing entitlements.

“Let’s look at what the insurance industry is doing in the state of Colorado to raise rates by double or triple,” he said. “Let’s look at what’s happening with property taxes.”

Kirkmeyer pushed back, saying the state does not get property tax revenue and instead relies on income and sales taxes to fund state operations.

Rather than focusing on taxes, Kirkmeyer said she would also target regulations, starting with the Public Utilities Commission. She pointed to what she called a “stupid” decision by the commission to drastically reduce natural gas as a power source. As governor, Kirkmeyer said she could immediately replace the PUC commissioners.

“When the price of energy goes up and your bills go up, everything goes up,” she said.

Griffin said affordability issues are largely driven by housing supply and argued that the state must address corporations that have amassed large inventories of single-family homes.

“We need to actually go after those corporations to get those homes released back to the people,” he said. “The sovereign wealth fund would also be able to buy those homes and return them to the public.”

Candidates say Colorado should work with Trump

All four GOP candidates agreed that Democratic leaders in Colorado have handled working with the Trump administration poorly.

When asked what they would do differently, Mikesell said he would be less adversarial.

Why would the federal government want to help Colorado if the state’s attorney general has filed more than 50 lawsuits against it? he asked.

“A strong leader should be flying to DC and sitting down with the president, and you have not seen that,” he said. “Not one time have you seen that happen in the state.”

Kirkmeyer said she feels like Polis is getting a “taste of his own medicine” as the Trump administration freezes and cuts federal funds based on Colorado policies. Kirkmeyer said when Weld County didn’t follow state-set policies during the pandemic, the governor withheld funding.

“I think what’s been happening for the last year is we’ve had a governor and an attorney general who thinks it’s a great idea every week to do another lawsuit against the federal government, instead of going and sitting down and trying to talk to the president and work through these issues,” she said.

Otlmann said, “I think that he’s cutting the federal funds to Colorado because Colorado is not following the law. So, if we have a Republican governor and a Republican legislature, I think that those funds will actually … unfreeze themselves, so to speak. But he’s looking for us to be responsible with the money. And frankly, the reason why he’s cutting off those funds, or threatened to cut them off, is because we’re not responsible with it.”

As a business owner, Griffin said he is more in favor of the state being more fiscally responsible and building a model that is not so reliant on federal funds.

“We can take care of our own business here,” he said. “But also, I don’t think I have a problem going to the White House, talking to the president, or any president for that matter, and saying, ‘Hey, look, this is what our people need to do’.”

The primary candidates in the Republican race will face off in the June primary election.

The debate was moderated by journalists Jesse Paul of The Colorado Sun and Ernest Luning of Colorado Politics.